Helena wakes from a dream about her grandfather, one of the last humans from the Gilgamesh generation who remembered ruined Old Earth and feared cold sleep because each awakening left him in a stranger world. In the dream, his terror brings ice into the room, reflecting Helena’s own transition out of suspension into a painfully cold awakening.

Helena regains consciousness on a freezing metal floor, partly out of her survival suit and bruised with strange fractal marks. Her memories return unevenly until she recognizes the chamber as part of the underwater environment where she and Portia were taken by the local octopuses.

Helena finds Portia nearby, conscious but badly affected by the freezing process. Portia’s body has suffered joint and internal damage, so Helena links to Portia’s suit and accelerates heating, though Helena knows real repair would require a return to the Voyager.

Portia warns Helena that they are being watched. Helena spots an octopus camouflaged against rubble in a neighboring chamber and tries to communicate with friendly colors on her slate; the octopus briefly answers in similar hues, leaving Helena unsure whether it is a guard, observer, or fellow quarantined prisoner.

Helena then discovers that her and Portia’s suits have been remotely recharged through a field using protocols resembling Old Empire technology. When Helena probes the local system through her implants, she unexpectedly gains access to a vast, alien information architecture. Most of it is incomprehensible, but by using fragments of translation and ancient protocols, Helena reaches an archive layer that contains a recognizable human name: Disra Senkovi.